this was four days before the election that year. having thought that the war was going to be over, now the president finds out the peace deal fell through because a candidate who wanted there not to be peace before the election intervened to make one side walk away. now, why didn't lbj say anything publicly? this is right before the election. can you imagine how the country would have reacted to that? this is a war the whole country was against. it was going to be over except candidate nixon intervened to undo the peace deal and keep the war going? can you imagine how angry the american public would have been. but lbj did not say anything publicly at the time because he thought he couldn't. the reason he thought he couldn't is the way he found out what nixon had done. the fbi illegally wire-tapped the phones of the south vietnamese ambassador. we couldn't let anybody know that we were illegally listening into the ambassador's phone lines so they couldn't let anybody know what they had heard. so nixon got away with it. and the octobe